US on edge ahead of polls
Guns and hate stoke fears as deeply divided nation readies to vote
WASHINGTON: Shootings that left three dead at protests against police brutality have stoked fears of rising violence as a deeply divided US heads into elections amid economic collapse, a deadly pandemic and the worst social upheaval since the 1960s.
President Donald Trump, hoping to secure a second term in November despite the crisis, was headed yesterday to Kenosha, the Wisconsin town which descended into violence last week after police shot a young black father seven times in the back.
The governor of the state, Democrat Tony Evers, called on Trump in vain to reconsider his visit, warning it would “hinder our healing” and arguing that the citizens of the town are already traumatised.
One of them, Gregory Bennett, said he no longer feels safe in the town where last Tuesday night, a 17-year-old who had joined a farright militia protecting private property shot dead two protesters.
Local white people “are in fear, they look for a reason to defend themselves and we have people over here (the militias) looking for a reason to attack,” said Bennett, a social worker and former member of the military who said he no longer leaves his house without a bulletproof jacket and a pistol in his belt.
In the United States, where the right to defend oneself is part of the national identity, some 30% of the adult population owns at least one firearm.
Shots were also fired over the weekend in Portland, Oregon, where left-wing protesters have regularly faced off with police for the past three months.
As a group of Trump supporters clashed with the protesters, one of them, who was wearing a baseball cap with a local far-right group’s logo, was shot dead on the fringes of the confrontation, in circumstances that are still unclear.
Between now and the election, “certainly there could be more shootings,” said Spencer Sunshine, who researches far-right groups in the United States.
“It could get a lot worse because I don’t think either side is going to back down,” he warned. — AFP